'Against the Tide' tells of landmark moment

Documentary to air on Showtime Friday

Former Tide players Steve Bisceglia, left, and Scott Hunter share a laugh at the Cobb Hollywood 16 theater during a red-carpet event for a screening of “Against the Tide,” a Showtime documentary about the 1970 Tide-USC game that helped integrate UA and the SEC's football teams. Also attending are, below, Alabama federal judge U.W. Clemon, center, along with Barbara Clemon, left, and Michelle Clemon.

staff photos | Dusty Compton

By Mark Hughes CobbEntertainment Editor

Published: Saturday, November 9, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, November 9, 2013 at 12:20 a.m.

“Against the Tide” sounds deceptive for the Showtime documentary that premiered at the Cobb Hollywood 16 Friday night, to an invited audience. It's anything but anti-Alabama, painting the program and legendary Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in golden light.

Former Tide players Steve Bisceglia, left, and Scott Hunter share a laugh at the Cobb Hollywood 16 theater during a red-carpet event for a screening of “Against the Tide,” a Showtime documentary about the 1970 Tide-USC game that helped integrate UA and the SEC's football teams. Also attending are, below, Alabama federal judge U.W. Clemon, center, along with Barbara Clemon, left, and Michelle Clemon.

staff photos | Dusty Compton

The title refers instead to those bucking the tide of history in the '60s, fans, alumni and others who had to be sold on the idea of an integrated University of Alabama football team. Those recalcitrant types were won over by a loss, after the University of Southern California Trojans came to Birmingham's Legion Field to open the 1970 season, trouncing the Tide 42-21. It was much worse than the score indicates: If USC Coach Jim McKay hadn't begun subbing starters out in the third quarter, it's suggested, the score could have been 100 to 0.

USC dominated for numerous reasons, chiefly that it was bigger, faster and stronger. That was demonstrated in part by African-American stars such as Sam Cunningham, who ran for 135 yards and two touchdowns on just 12 carries.

As UA star Scott Hunter, who carried the sting of that loss into his pro quarterbacking days — he would look for former USC players in his pro opponents and think, “Today I'm quarterbacking a bigger, faster, stronger team” — notes, after the USC game, fans began saying “We need to get some of them.” “Them” being black players. Hunter smiles, in the film, and says the light was finally beginning to dawn.

But, in a repeated refrain, the story was more complex than “black players beat white team.”

“The (USC) black players were bigger, strong and faster, and the white players were bigger, stronger and faster,” Hunter says in the film. “And if they had any polka-dotted players, they were bigger and stronger and faster.”

Still, the take-away for many was that Cunningham and other skill players such as quarterback Jimmy Jones, the first black college football player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, had guided the romp over a clearly outmanned 'Bama team.

After the 1970 season, Bryant brought in junior-college transfer John Mitchell, the first black to take the field for Alabama football, and landed running back Wilbur Jackson for the team's first black scholarship player. By the end of the decade — which Alabama dominated, winning 100 games and three national titles — the Tide was as fully integrated as any team in the country.

Myths sprang up around that sultry night, including the hoary legend about Bryant bringing Cunningham into the locker room after the game and saying, “This is what a football player looks like.” Hunter makes it clear that never happened. There's also the much-repeated line that Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama, in 60 minutes, than Martin Luther King Jr. did in 20 years, said to have been uttered by either Bryant or one of his assistants. But Taylor Watson of the Bryant Museum has sought in vain to find any verifiable attribution for that quote.

Possibly the tallest of the tales is that Bryant and McKay colluded on the games — a home-and-home contract, where the Tide traveled to Los Angeles in 1971 — specifically to change Southern hearts and minds about integration. Neither Bryant nor McKay remains alive to ask, and the question remains in the air at the end of producer Ross Greenburg's film, even if All-America lineman John Hannah and others remain convinced the Bear knew what would happen.

That plot between two old friends — in off-seasons, Bryant and McKay were golfing and drinking buddies — might contain a seed of truth, although as sports writer Keith Dunnavant points out in the film, the fiercely competitive Bear would never have scheduled a game he thought Alabama would lose.

The picture is just too complex for such simple answers, which is what drew Greenburg to create “Against the Tide.” He'd done several minutes on the pivotal game for a different film while at HBO, but realized this tale was worth its own feature-length treatment. “Against the Tide” sets the scene at both UA and USC, contrasting the powerhouse schools and how they changed throughout the '60s.

“We wanted to lay the groundwork for the times, of George Wallace and 'Bull' Connor,” said Greenburg, who attended the premiere along with Hunter, former UA fullback Steve Bisceglia, retired federal judge U.W. Clemon (who as a lawyer was representing the Afro-American Student Association at UA in a lawsuit against Bryant, dropped after the team was integrated), Percy Jones, leader of the AASA, and others from Showtime. “We wanted to show the 12 years before, what the Bear was doing in preparation to integrate the team.”

Clemon, who inherited the suit from a partner who'd left his law firm, said suing Bryant in 1969 made him “only the most despised person in the state,” and that the suit, had it gone to trial, could have been won. But the 1970 game made it unnecessary to carry forward, he said.

“That was when Coach Bryant got religion,” Clemon said, laughing.

Hunter agrees with his former teammate Hannah that UA's integration was already in the works, but that the fans had to be won over. Bisceglia noted that Wilbur Jackson was sitting in the stands at the 1970 game.

Some of the film's stars who'd hoped to attend weren't able to attend the premiere, like Joe Namath, who sets the early '60s atmosphere with rich and funny stories about the Bear. McKay's son John McKay Jr. recounts a tale of the coaches' fame, about a night his dad took Bryant to hotspot nightclub Chasen's in Beverly Hills. Frank Sinatra sent a note from the back, saying he'd like Bryant and McKay to come visit his table. Bryant responded “Tell Frank to come on up.” McKay says Sinatra showed up 30 seconds later.

Hannah repeatedly pops up in the film to enlighten and lighten, talking about how, even as UA's biggest player, he was tossed around like a ragdoll by USC.

“Golly bum,” Hannah says in the film, still laughing about it 43 years later. “It was just, they just...it was scary.”

“Against the Tide,” narrated by Tom Selleck, will begin airing at 9 p.m. Friday on Showtime.

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